Catalog

Performance/Myself or Video Identity

Collection of video performance, 1972-1995, 7 pieces, total 29min. This DVD is produced with "myself" as the sole object as well as the material of the performance except two videos with Akiko iimura. The video is not just a document of the performance but a work of video-art made specifically for video utilizing the video system including camera and monitor as a part of the performance. The video also questions the identity of oneself in video having tense relationships between words and images, and asks who is "I" and what "I" means. The videos assembled are:

In the first, "Self Identity" , I said in front of the camera, "I am Takahiko iimura," and "I am not Takahiko iimura," alternately. Does it sound like a ZEN-MONDO, a question and answer session of Zen monks? Yes, and no. The key of the piece is the former announced the voice synchronized with the picture and the latter without synchronization, the voice only. Next "Double Identity" is set in a similar context with a monitor, and the same person outside the monitor both in frontal view. They both claim "I am T.I.", then yield to each other, at the end both denying the identity themselves. It is subtitled "On turning the Double Negative to the Positive." It suggests only the viewer get the positive, not the person in the picture who is not able to hear what the other said. "Double Portrait" and "I Love You" are a paired piece with Akiko iimura. Both iimuras play individually as well as a unit. In "Double Portrait" they are never together, but one by one in three points of view, front, side, and back, assigned to the words "I", "You" and "He"/"She" respectively. They identify their own name positively and negatively one after the other. The pronouns rotate with every repetition, for instance, in front view with "You," then "He / She" and back to "I". Often the words are destroyed acoustically making them unintelligible. Are you confused? If you'd take a look, you'll see what I mean. "I Love You" is not a style of confession, but the words, and is a linguistic practice using a sentence " I love you" shifting the pronouns, (as it was called "Shifter" by linguist Roman Jacobson) both the subject and the object, according to who speaks to whom in the picture. The reverberating effect in the sound multiplies the words crossing over the words between them and dubbing the voice over male to female or vice versa. Two other companion pieces are "This Is A Camera Which Shoots This" and "As I See You You See Me". Both are set up facing two cameras and monitors and the performer walks between them while voicing the sentence. Here the words "This" and "You" have the same form in the nominative and the objective cases, switching the case, not only the signifier (word) but also the signified (object).In the last, "I Am A Viewer, You Are A Viewer", made in film, the performer plays the double role of the performer and the audience simultenously, talking to his own shadow. At the end the performer suggests the audience move into the light to see themselves in shadow. - (T.I.)